Stuff

The monthly ComRes online poll for the Independent on Sunday and Sunday Mirror is out tonight. Topline voting figures are CON 29%(nc), LAB 33%(-2), LDEM 8%(+1), UKIP 19%(-1), Others 11%. A slight reduction in the Labour lead since a month ago, but still a comfortable lead.

For the European elections voting intentions are CON 20%(-2), LAB 24%(nc), LDEM 6%(-2), UKIP 35%(+1), GRN 7%(+2). This would give UKIP a very comfortable victory indeed next week, and see the Liberal Democrats pushed to fifth place (and on a uniform swing they’d probably lose all their MEPs).

With five days to go until the European elections we’re obviously heading into final call territory, but my understanding is that ComRes have probably got another poll still to come before Thursday’s election. European election polls so far are here.

The Sunday Telegraph also has a new European election due tonight, in this case from ICM, and there is due to be an ICM poll for the Scotland on Sunday too, as well as the usual YouGov/Sunday Times poll. I will update later…

UPDATE: And the ICM European poll is also out. Their topline figures are CON 26%(+4), LAB 29%(-1), LDEM 8%(nc), UKIP 25%(-2). Changes are from the ICM poll for the Sunday Telegraph last month (ICM did a more recent European poll for the Guardian last weekend, but that was by telephone rather than online). In contrast to the ComRes poll ICM have Labour ahead and the Conservatives and UKIP in a close race for second place.

UPDATE2: I expect some readers will be hoping for some explanation for the gap between these polls. I’m afraid I don’t have a simple one to offer. Some of it might be down to ComRes using a very strict turnout filter, taking only those respondents who said they were 10/10 certain to vote, something which has tended to help UKIP. ICM’s tables aren’t yet available, so I don’t know for sure what they’ve done with turnout, but if their last online Euro poll is any guide they weighted by turnout (so people who say they are 10/10 certain to vote are counted in full, people who say they are 9/10 certain to vote are counted as only 0.9 of a vote, and so on down). That would still help UKIP, but not as much as a strict 10/10 only policy. However, that really can’t explain the whole of a ten point difference in UKIP support.

125 Responses to “ComRes/Sunday Indy – CON 29, LAB 33, LD 8, UKIP 19”

@Newhouset:
When you consider two facts, I think the tune changes a bit there:
(1) As of 1992, those three parties had over 95% of the vote in Great Britain…so you can also phrase it as “the share of voters abandoning the main three parties has increased by 400% over the last 20 years”. By the same token, the vote share for the Tories+Labour has been in a steady decline since the 1960s. In 1966, the two had around 90% of the vote. In 1979, that was down to 80.8%. In 1987, it was 73%. In 1997, it was 73.9%. In 2010, it was 65.1%. Right now, it is sitting at about 70% on a good day and 65% on a bad one…basically, at the bottom of a five-decade trendline that has only stalled at the moment because the biggest third party has imploded in the polls.
(2) The other issue with your point is that those three parties have to sort out a government with 75% of the vote split three ways versus 90% split two ways 50 years ago. It is a lot harder to get a majority government when you’re struggling to keep above 35%, and the fact that no party has been able to stabilize there in the last few years is something for each party to look at and try to sort out what is going wrong.

I think some of the polling is confusing some people and we are getting some strange results. If you are asked many different questions, including those related to general election and the EU elections, it must get quite confusing to some. Perhaps the way YG conduct their polls is more straightforward, so you get a more accurate representation of views.

This would have looked liked a typical Yougov poll (low end of MOE) from the last 6 months, if we were to forget the polling events of the last week, i note that Others are totaling 9% – 2% above their norm, which might give hope to Lab or LD.

The state of Britain’s economy has become less negative this week (employment figures?

However the question

How do you think the financial situation of your household will change over the next 12 months? -has become slightly more negative at -17% (18% Better 35% Worse).

Con supporters positive Lab and UKiP very negative, poorer people very negative, wealthier people much less negative.

i am surprised by this as wages with the new raised tax allowance was paid into bank accounts at the end of April, to nil voting effect it seems. I wonder if raising interests rates and therefore savings rates would cheer up older people.

The theme remains of poorer people and those away from the south of England feeling extremely pessimistic about their economic future – not much enthusiasm for any party to solve the problem, maybe there is no solution.

Both of my daughters live in London and I visit frequently from Somersetshire. What strikes me is that leafy Harrow is GENUINELY Multi-cultural as is not-quite-so-leafy Crouch End , and there seems to be a Labour ascendancy in both areas.
IMO , the edge that will take Labour to victory in 2015 is the development of a fully integrated African-Caribbean and Asian Middle-class.

@Gray@Newhouset
As well as (or even more than) the changes in vote share, turnout has declined from the 75% voting in the last century to an average of about 62% this. 35% of the vote is only 22% of the electorate.
That also means that a new party has 38% of the electorate to go at without changing any voter’s existing allegiance; or over 10% even if turnout goes back up only as far as the late 1900s

May I echo the appreciation of your extremely well-written piece of journalism about Park Hill. You must be a star on your course!

Like Amber, though, I think it is a big mistake to see the sense of despair you witnessed there as anything remotely novel. You could have written a similar article about visits to any number of British communities, at any time in history.

High-rise, Brutalist housing is a very tricky subject (in my opinion). Conceived for all the best reasons, and replacing housing that (although it was probably prettier, and the remnants of it make lovely, gentrified pieds-a-terre) was unspeakably awful. Initially loved by its residents (mainly because they’d come from the slums) but quickly found to be dehumanising, hard to maintain and hard to persuade people to live in. The only place where it seems to “work” is where for socio-economic reasons the residents are wealthy (if you’ve ever visited the Barbican estate in the City of London you’ll know what I mean).

Since the 1990s the consensus has been to tear it down and replace it with townhouses and small blocks of flats, on windy “traditional” streets where children can play on their bikes. The new estates aren’t perfect (all of the difficult tenants from the old estates moved straight into the new ones) but they are far more “human” and less intimidating. Chingford Hall Estate is the one closest to where I used to live in London. I

As for Park Hill, this quote is from Wiki;

“Although initially popular and successful, over time the fabric of the building has decayed somewhat and some other disadvantages of the estate, such as poor noise insulation and resident security, became apparent. For many years, the council found it difficult to find tenants for the flats. The estate was nicknamed “San Quentin” by some residents after the notorious American jail”.

And, of course, in the context of your article (a Labour supporting journalist visiting during an election campaign) it’s worth remembering that Urban Splash began the project to renovate and “part privatise” the estate in 2005, at the height of Labour hegemony, and at a time when bankers were the People’s Friends and not corrupt pantomime villains who had deliberately stolen the food from the mouths of the world’s children.

People often have a perception of their situation which is heartfelt, and often communicate that effectively to the media. Sometimes, the media (including journalism students) find a way to broadcast that communication very effectively. None of that means that the initial perception was completely accurate, or the analysis correct.

I agree about London. It is largely a “non-English” city, and setting aside space-related difficulties with housing and transport, has developed a rhythm and balance of its own which is remarkably harmonious in most areas. I think this largely explains the lower UKIP support there. Even the “English” residents by-and-large appreciate that having “non-English” neighbours doesn’t really do them any harm, and in many ways enhances their lives (boy do I miss Turkish food).

It’s true that at the current time, Labour has maintained the loyalty of most minority ethnic groups in London, which provides a level of electoral support that is probably above what might be expected from other areas of England with a similar socio-economic status. The “Block Vote” for Labour, other than a bit of turbulence in the East End with Respect and Islamic independents, seems to be mostly holding together.

It is one of the regrets of moderate RoC people like me, that in trying to accommodate rebellion on the right of the party, the Conservatives find it hard to appeal to the more integrated and economically secure sections of the minority vote, who might otherwise find them an attractive option.

I expect, and hope, that gradually this “anomaly” will unwind. UKIP have been at pains to highlight that the views of established immigrant communities on new immigration are complex. And explicitly “left wing” messages from the Labour Party designed to shore up its Union base may not appeal to the ethnic minority middle class.

For now, though, (and in 2015) I think Labour can safely rely on them. I expect Austerity has been very unpopular with that demographic, as in London, public services (CPS, NHS, education, local authorities, even the police) contain very large representations from the black and Asian communities.

I am rather averse to the idea that this is a problem and that “something must be done” other than politics. There’s no reason to suppose that this mass abstention is permanent, or that any sort of tinkering with the system ( other than making it illegal not to vote) will make more people vote. Eventually one political party or another will make an offer that draws in these non-voters. Until then the non-voters are within their rights not to vote..

@Marco – Personally I could also do without the posts about pets, and the ones about sport. If I wanted to discuss those things I’d go to websites for them. I am here because I want to discuss political polling.

Point very much taken. Obviously anything I see, hear and experience is going to find itself filtered through some level of existing preconception, no matter how hard I try to remove them from the equation. The best I can do is declare my allegiances and have people read what I say with that caveat in mind.

Yeah I did notice the dates on the regeneration project but what was also noteworthy was that all the signs around the site use the Neo Sans typeface – better known as the Labour Party typeface!

@CMJ/PI
Well I think it’s perfectly possible to hold the view that it’s a ‘massive problem’ without taking a line that ‘ “something must be done” other than politics’.
Indeed IMO the only thing that can and should be done is political and that supports the ‘massive opportunity’ view.

Don’t forget also that you should add (I think) 6M extra to the ‘Not Voted Party’, these being aficionados of the ‘Not Registered Party’.

Sometimes even politically committed people like me have to pinch themselves and remind themselves of what the difference is between Lab and Con. This pinching of course needed to be more severe when Blair was in power.

A ‘community’ politician has posted this on my local website:
“But what sort of a ‘Labour’ Party is it that:
– Hasn’t got the courage to oppose the government’s workfare policy that makes people work for £2 an hour.
– Hasn’t got the courage to make zero-hours contracts illegal.
– Hasn’t got the courage to oppose the government’s benefits cap, regardless of the fact that in individual cases of the family benefits cap this is leading to children starving and the use of food banks?”

Of course, he’s trying to win an election where Lab are his only likely rivals but it’s not so easy to rebut those allegations so it begs the question of whether the major parties actually give people anything to rally behind.

I agree sometimes I think Labour’s best work is behind them and they live on past glories: NHS, welfare state, equal pay, minimum wage, Scottish Parliament. But what have they done this century other than accept the Tory agenda. And, I am wondering what can be done as long as UKIP is distracting from the real problem and blaming the immigrants – what can change?

My thinkiing is to vote Yes in the Scottish referendum in the hope we can create a Social Democratic country here. I am starting to give up on England.

Not suggesting that “we” shrug our shoulders at non-voters only that it is a political choice to abstain. I do not see it as a symptom of constituional failure in need of some sort of constitutional fix – which is how it is usually presented.

I think that the framing of abstention as a reason for tinkering with the constitution is itself a party political ploy, posing as concern about “democratic legitimacy”. This is a bogus concern. If the parties (and factions) pushing this catastrophism knew how to appeal to abstainers they’d do it themselves and reap the rewards.

@Steve:
I remember that bit of history; I studied the Alliance when I was at university.

One point of interest that I tend to find is that both the Alliance and UKIP have a good deal of support in the South (for Euro purposes, the South East, South West, and East of England), while Labour’s presence in those regions tends to be a bit thin at most times.